So this is what Beijing is like!
When the motorcade entered the city, Xinni sighed. This distant city had nothing to do with her, a poor and hungry girl in a West Asian republic, but the Olympics made Beijing a holy place in her heart a few years ago. Xinni knew very little about Beijing, only a dark martial arts film she had seen when she was a child. In her imagination, Beijing was an ancient and peaceful city, and she could not connect this city with the grand and magnificent Olympics. She had dreamed of the Olympics and Beijing countless times, but the two never appeared in the same dream. In some dreams, she flew over the sea of people in the magnificent Olympic stadium like a bird, and in other dreams, she walked through the maze-like alleys and under the old city walls in the imaginary Beijing, looking for the Olympic stadium, but she never found it.
Xinni stared out the car window with wide eyes, looking for the alleys and city walls she imagined, but what she saw was a brand new modern high-rise building complex. The towering buildings glowed brightly in the sun, like new toys that had just been opened, or huge white plants that had grown up overnight. At this moment, in Xinni's mind, the Olympics and Beijing were perfectly combined.
The excitement of arriving in a new world was like the sun peeking out from between the clouds, casting a ray of light in Xinni's heart, but the gloomy clouds soon covered everything again.
Unlike the world's major media reports, when the athletes from the Republic of West Asia learned that they would participate in the Olympics, they did not feel excited or happy. Like other West Asians, more than a decade of suffering made them have no illusions about fate and numbly calm about all accidents. No matter whether the accident was good or bad, the first thing they did was to tighten their shells to protect themselves. After learning the news, no one even asked questions, even those that were taken for granted, such as how to enter the Olympics without participating in any preliminaries. No one raised them. They just walked onto the plane silently, numbly and sensitively watching the development of things.
After Xinni walked into the empty and spacious cabin, she found a window seat and sat down, paying attention to what was happening here. She saw the President of the International Olympic Committee summon Clare and several officials from the West Asian delegation to the first-class cabin. More than an hour passed, but there was still no movement. The athletes were also waiting quietly in silence, and finally saw Clare come out. He didn't say anything, just holding a piece of paper to check the list. Dozens of eyes were staring at his face, which was a calm face. This calmness was the first sign, telling Xinni that something was wrong. Soon her sensitive eyes discovered the second sign: when Clare returned to the first-class cabin with the list, he used his free hand to open the closed cabin door. Although his hand groped for a long time and couldn't find the handle, his eyes were still looking straight ahead instead of looking down, as if he was temporarily blind. At this time, Xinni confirmed her premonition.
Something is not right.
Everyone had a full meal in the cabin, and each person ate two or three meals. The appetite of these West Asians surprised the Chinese flight attendants. Then the plane took off. Xinni looked out the window and watched the sea of clouds quickly covering the land of West Asia. The sea of clouds rarely dispersed during the entire flight, as if a huge mystery was hidden underneath.
After the plane landed at Beijing Airport, it took two hours for the West Asian sports delegation, who had changed into uniforms, to walk out of the cabin. When they entered the arrival hall, they were immediately blinded by a storm of flashbulbs. The hall was packed with reporters, who crowded around the delegation like a group of hungry wolves seeing their prey, but always carefully kept a distance of about two meters from them, so that the delegation walked in the center of a small circle of moving open space, as if there was an invisible force field around them that repelled the reporters. What made Sinni and other West Asians even more frightened was that no one asked questions. There was only the click of flashbulbs and the rustling sound of the soles of the crowded people rubbing against the floor in the hall. When walking out of the hall, Sinni heard a roar in the air and looked up to see three small helicopters hanging in the air, not knowing whether they were on guard or taking pictures. There were only two buses transporting the delegation, but they were escorted by more than a dozen police cars and a motorcycle team of armed police. When the car drove onto the highway from the airport to the city, Sinni and other West Asian athletes discovered something that shocked them even more: the road was cleared and closed, and there was not a single car in sight!
Something is really wrong.
It was already dark when they arrived at the Olympic Village. When the West Asian athletes got off the car, their doubts turned into fear: the Olympic Village was dead silent, and the lights of dozens of neatly-built athlete apartment buildings were mostly off. When they walked towards a lighted apartment building, Xinni noticed a row of tall flagpoles in the middle of a small square in the distance. There were no national flags on those flagpoles, like a long row of dead trees in winter. Outside, the lights of the city illuminated half of the night sky, and the noise was faint, which further set off the strange silence of the Olympic Village. Xinni shuddered, and this place reminded her of the mausoleum.
In the reception hall of the athletes' apartment, Clare, the head of the delegation, gave a brief speech to the athletes: "Please go to your rooms. Dinner will be delivered to your rooms in one hour. No one is allowed to go out tonight. You must have a good rest. At nine o'clock tomorrow morning, we will represent the Republic of West Asia to participate in the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games."
Xinni was in the same elevator with Claire and Sari. She heard Sari whisper to the leader, "Are you really not going to tell us the truth? Could it be that... the Peace Window concept is really going to be realized?"
"You will understand everything tomorrow. We should let everyone sleep well for at least one night." (To be continued)